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Otakon Issues Warning of Fake Hotel Web Sitehttp://animecons.com/news/article.shtml/1511/Otakon_Issues_Warning_of_Fake_Hotel_Web_Site
Thu, 13 Jul 2017 12:00:00 ESThttp://forums.animecons.com/showtopic.php?tid/3689/http://animecons.com/news/article.shtml/1511/Otakon_Issues_Warning_of_Fake_Hotel_Web_Site
Otakorp, the organization behind Otakon, has issued a warning about a "pirate housing website" that was created to trick people into signing up for invalid hotel reservations. The "otakon2017.org" web site, which has since been shut down, was not associated with Otakon, Otakorp Inc, or Otakon's exclusive hotel provider, Experient.

Otakorp is unable to determine if any reservations were taken through this site, if those reservations will be honored, or any information that may have been collected by the site.

If you have not received a reservation confirmation e-mail which looks like the official confirmation pictured below, Otakon urges you to contact Experient immediately at (800) 967-8852 or otakonhousing@experient-inc.com. International residents may call +1-847-996-5832.

John Nadzam, Hotel and Venue Manager for Otakorp, said in a written statement, "We are very sorry this has happened, but we are glad we caught it. Our members are important to us, because we are also fans, cosplayers, artists and dreamers. Our mantra from day one has been 'by fans for fans' and we mean it. I know, I was there, and we could have never got here any other way."]]>

It's Over 9,000! That's the Number of Cons in the FanCons.com Databasehttp://animecons.com/news/article.shtml/1510/Its_Over_9000_Thats_the_Number_of_Cons_in_the_FanConscom_Database
Thu, 01 Jun 2017 12:00:00 ESThttp://forums.animecons.com/showtopic.php?tid/3676/http://animecons.com/news/article.shtml/1510/Its_Over_9000_Thats_the_Number_of_Cons_in_the_FanConscom_Database

Today, just over 6 months after the 8,000th convention was added, the FanCons.com convention database passed the 9,000 convention mark. The database began in October 2003 as part of AnimeCons.com, but expanded beyond anime conventions with the creation of FanCons.com in early 2012.

The 9,000th convention to be added was one of the longest running and most well-known conventions, Worldcon 76 which is scheduled to take place in August 2018 in San Jose, California. The first Worldcon took place in New York City in 1939.

Anime fans, of course, will likely associate this particular milestone with an infamous quote from the English dub of Dragon Ball Z. The line, "It's over nine thousand!" was in the episode "The Return of Goku" where it was spoken by Vegeta (originally performed by Brian Drummond, now performed by Christopher Sabat) has since become a meme. Appropriately enough, the 9,001st convention is an anime convention, No
Brand Con 2018, which will take place in May 2018 in Wisconsin Dells, Wisconsin.

Even as we quickly approach cataloging information on 10,000 conventions around the world going as far back as 1936, there are still many, many more conventions out there. Any convention organizers who don't see their conventions listed can submit them. After the submission is reviewed for accuracy, the information will be added.

Patrick Delahanty is the creator of FanCons.com and executive producer of AnimeCons TV. He has attended 165 fan conventions and plans to visit three more in the next month.

]]>Now Available: AnimeCons.com stickers for iOS and AnimeCons TV app for Apple TVhttp://animecons.com/news/article.shtml/1509/Now_Available_AnimeConscom_stickers_for_iOS_and_AnimeCons_TV_app_for_Apple_TV
Tue, 30 May 2017 12:00:00 ESThttp://forums.animecons.com/showtopic.php?tid/3674/http://animecons.com/news/article.shtml/1509/Now_Available_AnimeConscom_stickers_for_iOS_and_AnimeCons_TV_app_for_Apple_TVWe have just launched an AnimeCons.com sticker pack for iOS that can be used in Apple's Messages app as well as an Apple TV app for watching HD video content from AnimeCons TV.

AnimeCons.com launched in 2003 and in that time, our mascot, Connie, has gone through multiple iterations. The art has evolved from the original design created by Riki "Riddle" Lecotey and the chibi artwork by Sarah "Nami" Hevey used for the first four years of AnimeCons TV to the current artwork created by Svetlana Chmakova. We've released an iOS sticker pack featuring all of this artwork. Using Apple's Messages app (which you use when you send a text to anyone), you can tap a sticker and place it into the conversation or you can tap and hold a sticker to drag it up onto a previous message.

We've also launched an AnimeCons TV app for Apple TV. Launching as a podcast in 2009, AnimeCons TV has published over 250 episodes and 48 "extras" such as full costume contests and guest interviews. The show started publishing in HD at the start of its 5th season and the Apple TV app allows for easy viewing of any of those HD episodes from the last 4+ years as well as all of our "extras" content.

New episodes of AnimeCons TV are published every Monday at 3pm Eastern, Noon Pacific. They are available in the Apple TV app, on YouTube, and in our podcast feeds.

Both the iOS stickers and the Apple TV app are available as free downloads.

]]>Crunchyroll Announces Convention Partnership Programhttp://animecons.com/news/article.shtml/1507/Crunchyroll_Announces_Convention_Partnership_Program
Wed, 29 Mar 2017 12:00:00 ESThttp://forums.animecons.com/showtopic.php?tid/3655/http://animecons.com/news/article.shtml/1507/Crunchyroll_Announces_Convention_Partnership_Program
Crunchyroll has announced the "Powered by Crunchyroll" program to team up with conventions around the United States to bring benefits to their premium members and VRV subscribers. The first conventions announced as a part of this program are Anime Boston, Anime Weekend Atlanta, and Anime NYC.

The program promises to give perks like discounts, early access to the exhibit hall, panels, or events, and additional convention-specific items.

Crunchyroll has launched a site at CrunchyrollEvents.com which has information on these conventions, Anime Movie Night, and their upcoming Crunchyroll Expo convention. The site also provides information on joining the Crunchyroll Events Crew Program and their Outreach Program for libraries and clubs.]]>

Largest North American Anime Conventions of 2016http://animecons.com/news/article.shtml/1504/Largest_North_American_Anime_Conventions_of_2016
Mon, 02 Jan 2017 12:00:00 ESThttp://forums.animecons.com/showtopic.php?tid/3639/http://animecons.com/news/article.shtml/1504/Largest_North_American_Anime_Conventions_of_2016Every January, AnimeCons.com looks back at the last year of anime conventions to figure out which were the largest in North America. This isn't meant to be a list of the "best" anime cons, but merely the largest. By looking for any attendance trends among the largest cons, it may indicate any overall trends affecting the entire anime convention industry or perhaps fan conventions as a whole.

Before we present the list, we first need to explain the different ways that a convention can count its attendance:

The most common method, but one that is very misleading, is used by most non-anime conventions and trade shows. A "turnstile" attendance count method counts people multiple times for every day of the convention that they attend. For example, if there are 1,000 people at a three day convention each day, they would report their attendance as 3,000...as if each of those 1,000 people passed through a turnstile once per day. Although some anime conventions report turnstile numbers, they are often offered in addition to one of the following two counting methods. Although this site considers turnstile counts to be misleading and disingenuous, we've recently started listing them in order to be able to help people distinguish the difference and be able to compare attendance numbers more fairly.

Another method is to count each person who was issued a badge. This is often referred to as "total attendance" or a "warm body count". This will include attendees, staff, press, vendors, guests, and anyone else who was wearing a convention badge. If they attended multiple days, they just get counted once. It does not include people without a badge such as hotel employees or convention center employees.

The final method commonly used to report attendance is a paid attendance count. This simply counts the number of people who paid for a badge. Unlike the warm body count, it doesn't include staff, guests, press, or others with a badge...unless they paid for it. This method also only counts people once even if they're attending multiple days.

All the attendance figures we present in this report and on AnimeCons.com have been provided by convention staffs themselves. They have been announced on the convention's own web sites, on the convention's social media, reported directly to this site, or one of our site's staff have reported back a number officially announced at the convention. None of these numbers are guesses by AnimeCons.com staff and none have been pulled from anonymous sources such as unsourced Wikipedia entries. Where attendance is marked as "approximately" signifies that the number reported by the convention is likely rounded and not an exact count.

Our annual list also only consists of conventions with a primary focus on anime. This means that multi-genre conventions are not included. We also do not include conventions such as comic cons or sci-fi cons that have anime programming. To include those in this list would be impossible due to the number of those conventions in existence, the unavailability of attendance numbers for many of them, and the vast differences in counting methods. Anime conventions that share admission with non-anime conventions (such as comic or steampunk conventions) are also not included on this list because it is impossible to tell how many are attending the anime half of the convention.

Anime Expo's top ranking should surprise exactly nobody. They've been the largest anime convention in North America for 13 straight years. This is their first time with an attendance of over 100,000 people and they're the first anime convention to hit that mark after adding nearly 10,000 additional attendees in 2016. Anime Expo will likely continue to grow as it is often cited by attendees as the most common convention that they'd like to visit someday. However, AX's own growth has often been the source of problems as overcrowding is often cited by its attendees as one of the biggest issues at the convention.

Climbing to the #2 spot from #4 last year is A-Kon in Dallas which had consistent growth (at about 11%) from the previous year. Starting in 1990, A-Kon is the longest continuously running anime convention in North America and this is the first time the convention has moved above the #3 spot for as long as we've been publishing our annual list.

Chicago's Anime Central holds on to the #3 spot for the seventh straight year. They only reported an increase of 356 warm bodies (about 1% growth). Following some years of significant growth, this is their third year of growth under 5%.

Anime North in Toronto reported 29,973 paid attendees in 2016. This is down 237 people from 2015, but still enough to come in at the #4 spot.

Once considered a lock for the #2 spot, Otakon dropped down to #5 last year with the largest attendance drop we've ever seen by any convention. They hold onto that spot for 2016 and seem to be back on track and added 2,236 additional paid attendees for their final year at the Baltimore Convention Center. It will be interesting to see how their move to Washington, DC affects attendance for the next couple years.

Moving up to the #6 spot is Anime Weekend Atlanta with a very respectable growth rate of about 15% and an additional 3,674 attendees.

Continuing with yet another year of exceptional growth, Anime Matsuri in Houston has moved into the #7 spot for 2016 with an additional 5,887 people in 2016. They've seen growth rates of 44%, 30%, 25%, and now 24%, but as was said last year, the Houston market is only so large and faces competition from Dallas, Austin, and San Antonio. It seems likely that these attendance increases will have to normalize eventually. A growth rate of over 20% cannot continue forever.

Anime Boston has moved from its rather consistent location in the #6 spot to #8 this year with a drop of 175 attendees. However, the convention seems to have attracted more single-day attendees as the convention reported a higher turnstile attendance count of 78,661 in 2016 over their count of 78,008 in 2015. Boston's anime convention is still feeling the effects of increased convention center security as a result of the 2013 Boston Marathon bombing a block away from the Hynes Convention Center and guns that were seized during a 2015 Pokemon Championship at the venue. The increased security has resulted in longer lines as attendees try to enter the facility. The staff has been working with the venue to try and resolve security checkpoint issues for 2017.

Sakura-Con in Seattle reported "member attendance" for 2016, which we're interpreting as paid attendance, was "over 23,000 individuals". This is obviously a rounded estimate, but we have been unable to obtain a more specific attendance figure with which to compare to last year's warm body attendance count.

With 10% growth and 1,836 additional paid attendees, Youmacon makes their first appearance in the #10 slot since they last appeared on the list in 2011. They're closely followed by Otakuthon in Montreal which actually reported a number 279 people larger, but that was a warm body count compared to Youmacon's paid attendance count. However, we're including them both in the list because they're both so close and over 20,000 people.

It's worth noting that there is a difference of less than 2,500 people between the second and sixth conventions on the list. This just about puts these five conventions in a five-way tie. Furthermore, the difference between the second convention and the seventh is less than 4,000 people.

As always, we remind you that these are merely the largest conventions and are not necessarily the best. If past history is any indication, this list is bound to be copied and used as some other site's "Best Anime Cons" list. That's a shame because there are some absolutely wonderful conventions out there that are not mentioned on this list. You can have a lot of fun at smaller events and we strongly urge you to find the conventions near you and try them out.

Frequent convention guest Robert DeJesus has alerted his Facebook and Instagram followers that someone has created an imposter Instagram account with the name robertdejesus_art. The imposter has reportedly been soliciting commissions from followers. Robert confronted them via Instagram comment, but the comment was deleted and he was blocked. One Instagram user reports being told the imposter was asking $20 for a color sketch. After being asked why they had "two accounts", the imposter claimed it was to reach more people.

The imposter account currently has 32 pieces of Robert DeJesus's art posted from mere minutes before this post to 4 days ago. Each of them has been copied from Robert's official Instagram account. Each image posted by the imposter has the description "Dm if you want to animate your self" followed by a large number of hashtags.

After being called out via comments and direct messages, the imposter has disabled comments but continues to post art.

The imposter account is clearly in violation of Instagram's Terms of Use which states "Instagram prohibits the creation of and you agree that you will not create an account for anyone other than yourself." Unfortunately, Instagram does not offer any method to report third-party impersonations. Instagram says, "We only respond to reports sent to us from the person who's being impersonated or a representative of the person who's being impersonated (ex: a parent). If someone you know is being impersonated, please encourage that person to report it."

Do not follow the imposter account because an increased follower number only serves to legitimize it. Obviously, under no circumstances should you order a commission from this poster. You will obviously not be getting actual art from Robert DeJesus...and are likely not to get any art at all. If you want art from Robert DeJesus, contact him directly.

Today, the FanCons.com convention database has passed the 8,000 convention mark. The database began in October 2003 as part of AnimeCons.com, but expanded beyond anime conventions with the creation of FanCons.com in early 2012.

The 8,000th convention to be added was Anime Milwaukee 2017 which is scheduled to take place in February 2017 in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. It will be Anime Milwaukee's tenth year.

Although the database now has over 8,000 conventions, there are still a lot more out there. Any convention organizers who don't see their conventions listed can submit them. After the submission is reviewed for accuracy, the information will be added.

The FanCons.com site also has a database of guests which recently hit 6,100 guests with the addition of Matt Smith. (No, not THATMatt Smith, a different one...from Canada...who is probably not a time lord.)

All of the data available through FanCons.com and its affiliated sites (including the new VideoGameCons.com site) has been painstakingly entered by hand by unpaid volunteers with an appreciation and love for conventions.

Behind the scenes, FanCons.com and AnimeCons.com are currently in the process of being re-written from the ground up. The new sites will not only present an updated UI with a mobile-responsive interface and improve the functionality of some existing features such as the user-submitted convention rating system. The new sites will also offer a number of new features which will be announced at a later date.

Patrick Delahanty is the creator of FanCons.com, AnimeCons.com, and executive producer of AnimeCons TV. He has personally entered a majority of the database information himself.

VideoGameCons.com, a site focused exclusively on video gaming conventions, has launched after completing a complete top-to-bottom redesign. In addition to a new mobile-responsive look, the back-end of the site has been completely re-written and updated.

The site shares the same database as FanCons.com. FanCons.com will display all conventions, but VideoGameCons.com only displays conventions focused on video gaming and video game programming. Although many conventions have some kind of video gaming, particularly anime conventions, the conventions listed on VideoGameCons.com list video gaming as one of the primary focuses of their convention.

The home page of VideoGameCons.com lists the three next conventions that have a primary focus on video games. This would include well known video gamer conventions like E3, PAX, and RTX.

The Calendar section is where the meat of the site is. It has a list of future conventions worldwide, but users can view previous years or specific regions as well. A map feature lets users browse conventions plotted out on a map.

The Reports section lists convention reports from third-party sites. If you've written up a report on a video gaming convention, you can submit it here and it will be listed in this section and on the information page for that con.

Additional new features are on the way, but the site should already prove to be a valuable resource for fans of video games and organizers of video gaming conventions.

If your video game convention is not yet on VideoGameCons.com, you can submit it for approval. Listing your con on VideoGameCons.com will also get it listed on FanCons.com since they share the same database.

You can enable the skill by finding the FanCons.com skill on Amazon.com and clicking "Enable Skill". You can also enable the skill by going to your Alexa app, selecting "Skills", searching for "FanCons.com", clicking the skill in the search results, and pressing the "Enable Skill" button.

To hear it in action, just say, "Alexa, what's new?" or "Alexa, play my flash briefing." Alexa will play your flash briefings in the order set by your Alexa app. The FanCons.com skill will list all fan conventions taking place between today and a week from now as listed on FanCons.com.

A second Alexa skill for AnimeCons.com has been submitted and is awaiting approval from Amazon. As you might expect, it will only list conventions with anime and manga programming as found on AnimeCons.com. Approval is expected in the next few weeks.

At this time, Alexa's flash briefings are only available in the United States. When Amazon adds support for other countries, this skill will be available there.

If any convention organizers want their convention to be included in the list when their convention approaches, all they have to do is make sure they're listed on FanCons.com by checking the convention listings and using the new convention submission form.

]]>Sukoshi Con cancels Louisville Anime Weekend and all future eventshttp://animecons.com/news/article.shtml/1497/Sukoshi_Con_cancels_Louisville_Anime_Weekend_and_all_future_events
Tue, 05 Jul 2016 12:00:00 ESThttp://forums.animecons.com/showtopic.php?tid/3598/http://animecons.com/news/article.shtml/1497/Sukoshi_Con_cancels_Louisville_Anime_Weekend_and_all_future_eventsTwitter announcement today, Sukoshi Con has announced Louisville Anime Weekend "has been cancelled and that there will not be any future Sukoshi Con events."

The announcement comes after all Sukoshi Con web sites have been taken down and related Facebook groups have been deleted. The @SukoshiCon Twitter account remains online.

Louisville Anime Weekend was the only future convention scheduled at the time of the announcement. No details have yet been given as to refunds for this event and the Eventbrite registration page is still online and accepting registrations. This is likely an oversight and not a disingenuous attempt to collect money for a cancelled event.

Sukoshi Con could not be reached for comment. Attempts to e-mail any sukoshicon.com e-mail address bounced back as undeliverable.

UPDATE (July 7): The web site is back online and still links to the active Eventbrite registration page. As far as we know, the convention is still cancelled. We do not recommend registering.

UPDATE (July 10): The main sukoshicon.com page now says that all future Sukoshi Con conventions are cancelled. The Louisville Anime Weekend page is now completely blank (except for a tiny logo) with no cancellation notice posted there. The Eventbrite page remains online and collecting registrations.]]>

Anime Matsuri hires former SPJA CEOhttp://animecons.com/news/article.shtml/1495/Anime_Matsuri_hires_former_SPJA_CEO
Fri, 03 Jun 2016 12:00:00 ESThttp://forums.animecons.com/showtopic.php?tid/3589/http://animecons.com/news/article.shtml/1495/Anime_Matsuri_hires_former_SPJA_CEO
On Tuesday, Anime Matsuri posted a statement on their web site announcing that Marc Perez, former Chairman and CEO for Society for the Promotion of Japanese Animation (SPJA), the parent company for Anime Expo, has been hired as Chief Operating Officer of Anime Matsuri.

Anime News Network reported that Mr. Perez left the SPJA on April 7th. He had worked with the SPJA for 12 years and took over as CEO in 2010 after the former CEO, Michael Lattanzio, stepped down.]]>

If your costume contest is five hours long, you're doing it wronghttp://animecons.com/blog/post.shtml/1494/If_your_costume_contest_is_five_hours_long_youre_doing_it_wrong
Tue, 24 May 2016 12:00:00 ESThttp://forums.animecons.com/showtopic.php?tid/3583/http://animecons.com/blog/post.shtml/1494/If_your_costume_contest_is_five_hours_long_youre_doing_it_wrongFanimeCon announced their schedule for their 2016 Masquerade Cosplay Contest on their web site. It's scheduled to start at 6pm and the award announcements will begin around 10:30pm. That means the entire event (not including seating) will last approximately five hours for just 55 entries.

There's 15 minutes for opening announcements and introductions. That seems rather excessive. Five minutes should be more than enough time to welcome everyone, introduce the emcee, introduce a handful of judges, go over some rules, and get started. What's happening for the other 10 minutes? Is it extra padding in case seating takes longer or people aren't actually ready on time?

The karaoke winner gets 5 minutes to perform. That's a reasonable amount of time to sing a song, but why is this even here? Get the show started and have the karaoke winner perform later while judges are making their decisions.

The first 25 entries are scheduled for 70 minutes. That's 2.8 minutes per entry. Some of these will be "walk on" entries, meaning that they walk on the stage, strike a few poses, and walk off. These are easily under a minute each (although the rules state a limit of 90 seconds), leaving more time for skit entries. Skit entries are allowed up to 2.5 minutes each. Even if all 25 entries were skits and all of them ran the full 2.5 minutes, that would only occupy 62.5 minutes. Factoring in the emcee's introductions, it's mathematically possible this could run over 70 minutes, but extremely unlikely.

After a 15 minute intermission (because the show is so long), the second half has 75 minutes for 30 entries. That's an average of 2.5 minutes per entry. Worst case scenario, they're all skits that run the maximum time, this could run over when you factor in the emcee's introductions.

Of course, there are two very obvious choices that could be made to reduce the running time of the skits: cut down the number of skits and/or reduce the maximum time for each entry. Using the same worst-scenario time estimate, a reduction of skit entries to just 2 minutes each would save up to nearly half an hour. What story can you tell in 2.5 minutes that you can't tell in 2? Keep the performance times short to keep things moving. Nothing drags down the excitement of a costume contest like a poor skit that seems like it never ends.

Why do walk-ons get 90 seconds? Some costume contests even restrict skits to 60 seconds, so cutting back the walk-ons should be a no-brainer. They walk on, strike some poses, walk off. If someone's using up the full minute-and-a-half, they've never heard the saying "Always leave them wanting more."

After the entries have finished, there is 30 minutes of exposition performances planned. Yes, these can be amazing to watch because they're often professionals with incredible performances. 30 minutes seems rather excessive though. Still, that's 30 minutes that can be used by judges to make award decisions.

Following the exposition performances, there's "Extravaganza's game show" planned for an hour. This appears to be the biggest cause for the length of the contest. I don't know what this game show entails, but I have to wonder why it's here. It should be scheduled after the awards or at another time or in another location.

The event ends with the presentation of awards. The judges have an excessive 90 minutes to decide on 12 performance awards, 4 craftsmanship awards (which should have already been decided during pre-judging), and a judge's award from each judge. If these judges are keeping score and halfway decent notes during the competition, the decision making process should not last more than 30 minutes for these dozen performance awards.

Five hours is unbearably long for this event. Here's a proposed improved schedule (with the number of skits reduced to a nice round 50, walk-ons limited to 60 seconds, and skits limited to 2 minutes):

By simply moving the game show, cutting out 5 skits, slightly reducing stage time, and cutting back on opening announcements, two hours have been trimmed! If we cut the skits back to a maximum of 1.5 minutes, we could probably do without the intermission and save another 40 minutes!

The point is that five hours is not necessary for a costume contest with this many entries. The contest was already excessively long last year thanks to countless technical delays. (FanimeCon 2015's masquerade was over 2 hours long just counting the competing entries and awards. Tadao, the emcee, admitted that he had stalled so much that he ran out of material!)

This 2016 schedule is quite worrisome. With the convention in less than a week, it's too late to make changes, but FanimeCon's Masquerade organizers should take a serious look at the costume contests of other large conventions to get some ideas to streamline the event for 2017. Five hours is crazy!]]>

This news comes one week after a new venue was announced for the convention. Originally scheduled at the Radisson Hotel Denver Southeast in Aurora, Colorado, the hotel announced in mid-March that the hotel had cancelled the event. On April 1st, the convention announced that it had found a new location at the Ramada Plaza Northglenn/Denver North in Northglenn. The new location is 25 miles from the former location.

Anime Southwest is run by the same organization that runs Sukoshicon conventions in the South. They entered the Denver market last year when they licensed the Animeland Wasabi name. However, they split off for their 2016 convention and Animeland Wasabi 2016 was not organized by Sukoshicon.

After cancelling ten conventions in the last two months, YourMiniCon has now cancelled their event in Portland, Maine (also known as "Super Sentai Ranger Con"), the only remaining event other than their original Connecticut location.

To address concerns expressed by our fans about the status of our event in Maine, we would like to explain what is going on. We had contracted all of the guests through a single agency that asked for exclusive rights to represent any guests at the event. We signed contracts, and outlined a marketing plan for promotion almost a year ago.

We allotted a four month period of promotion before any deposits were due on those guests, and proceeded to announce the guests and push the event back in November of 2015. A decent amount of interest was generated, and we had recently been to the Portland, ME area in October to put up simple flyers at local comic and gaming shops.

In January, Groupon reached out to us about our events and we launched several deals for our events. To date, four Groupon vouchers for Maine have been purchased. Four out of an allotted eight thousand.

We printed 11x17 posters up featuring the guest list, some of the specialized vendors and artists, and all of the event information at the beginning of February. We had plans to distribute them around the New England area along with talking with shop owners and fans in the region.

Since early sales were not quite where we had estimated they would be, the agency representing our guests pulled their active support and contacted their guest list. They informed each of their guests that they are welcome to attend, and if still interested to contact us. However, they did not give any contact information to those guests.

We have since been in communication with other agencies who represent the guests we had listed to negotiate new contracts for appearance. However, it seems that somehow the information was made public before we had a chance to clear up any contract issues.

While we knew that a few had indicated they would no longer attend, we wanted to try and negotiate new terms for their appearance before pulling them from the website.

With Lexington Toy Con having passed and several of the guests who had withdrawn from our event indicating to fans of our event that they were not currently attending anymore, we feel that we had to address the issue.

As of today, 63 days out from the event, we are cancelling Super Sentai Ranger Con. We will contact anyone due a refund with an estimate on when those refunds will be issued. I want to thank the few fans and vendors who signed up for their support, but we had misgivings months ago with low sales and we should have cancelled it then.

After the last round of cancellations, YourMiniCon's William Case told Nerd & Tie that they were attempting to refocus on the East Coast and they had realized they tried to expand too quickly after the Nevada show had "practically nonexistent sales".

As with previous cancellations from YourMiniCon, it is expected that refunds will be issued if you were one of the few people that pre-registered.

]]>YourMiniCon quietly cancels four more conventionshttp://animecons.com/news/article.shtml/1490/YourMiniCon_quietly_cancels_four_more_conventions
Sun, 21 Feb 2016 12:00:00 ESThttp://forums.animecons.com/showtopic.php?tid/3560/http://animecons.com/news/article.shtml/1490/YourMiniCon_quietly_cancels_four_more_conventions
A month ago, we reported that YourMiniCon cancelled six conventions. We discovered this morning that the YourMiniCon events in Nevada, Colorado, Ohio, and Louisiana have been removed from the YourMiniCon web site. This leaves Connecticut (which took place in January) and Maine as the only remaining events.

No formal announcement has been posted on the YourMiniCon web site, Twitter, or Facebook page. The only mention of any cancellation was in a Twitter reply on February 10th. In the reply, the organizers state "YMCLV [YourMiniCon Las Vegas] has been cancelled due to lack of booth and ticket sales."

Since January, YourMiniCon has now cancelled 10 out of 12 announced events. According to a February 2nd Facebook post, some people were still waiting for refunds from the cancelled Wisconsin event and YourMiniCon was "amping up our Nevada and Maine sales to try to cover everything."

YourMiniCon has been heavily promoting its Maine event with at least one Facebook post per day promoting a guest appearance.]]>